The Spokesman
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| The Spokesman | |
|---|---|
| Type | Monthly |
| Format | Tabloid |
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| Owner | Jake Felton, Sarah Matthes, Princeton Day School |
| Editor | Jake Felton, Sarah Matthes |
| Founded | 1965 |
| Price | Free |
| Headquarters | Princeton Day School, Princeton, New Jersey, USA |
| Circulation | 1600 |
The Spokesman is the student newspaper of Princeton Day School, in Princeton, New Jersey. Its circulation is 1600 and includes students, employees, parents, and alumni of the school.
The paper publishes eight times a year. Each volume begins in May and lasts through March.
Contents |
[edit] Editorial Board
An Editorial Board of 24 students holds responsibility for the operations of The Spokesman, including the content and layout of the paper. Two Faculty Advisors oversee this Board. Their role has been the subject of some discussion. (See "Controversy" below.)
Positions on the 2008-2009 Editorial Board are:
- Editors-in-Chief (2)
- Senior Editors (3)
- News Editors (2)
- Features Editors (2)
- Arts Editors (2)
- Opinions Editors (2)
- Styles Editors (2)
- Sports Editors (2)
- Associate Editors (2)
- Copy Editor (1)
- Photography Editors (2)
- Staff Artists (2)
[edit] Writers
The Editorial Board draws on students outside the staff to report and write most articles, though the editors generally undertake big and late-breaking stories themselves.
[edit] Contributing Writers
New Spokesman writers receive the byline "Contributing Writer."
[edit] Senior Staff Writers
Writers who have contributed more than five articles of high journalistic quality to the paper receive the byline "Senior Staff Writer."
[edit] The Blacklist
Editors have formed a figurative Blacklist limited to writers who have failed to fulfill their obligation to the Spokesman. Contributors on the Blacklist are prohibited from writing for an indefinite, though not necessarily infinite, amount of time.
Insufficient and/or unethical reporting in addition to tardiness are non-stop tickets to the Blacklist. Bad writing, however, is not a criterion for this ubiquitously feared status.
[edit] List of Editors-in-Chief
- 2008-2009: Jake Felton, Sarah Matthes
- 2007-2008: Mark Brennan, Simon Liebling
- 2006-2007: Meg Francfort, Ross Worthington
- 2005-2006: Elizabeth Kassler-Taub, Madeleine Rosenberg
- 2004-2005: Jay Bavishi, Mendy Fisch
[edit] Issues and Sections
The Spokesman publishes a May, June, summer, October, November, December, February, and March issue. Editions most always range between 12 and 20 pages and, save for the May and summer ones, include the following sections:
- News
- Features
- Arts
- Opinions
- Middle School
- Styles
- Sports
[edit] May Issue
This issue omits the Middle School section and replaces it with a two-page Humor section, completed by the seniors of the previous Editorial Board.
[edit] Summer Issue
The line-up for this issue is as follows:
- News
- Class of [Year of Graduation]
This section includes transcripts of the two student and one outside Commencement speeches as well as Senior Project and matriculation lists. The latter lists once linked students with the colleges they were to attend, but potential issues of legality have since prevented this practice, and now only a list of the colleges seniors plan to attend is included.
- Farewells
This section includes a number of short Goodbye articles to the school's departing employees.
- Opinions
- Sports
[edit] Layout
The Spokesman prints as a tabloid, each page 11 by 17 inches with five columns. It makes use of relatively thick, recycled paper, which allows the paper to simultaneously keep environmentally responsibile and hold up well when archived.
The Spokesman introduced color to its layout in its May 2008 issue, with Page One and the final and two middle pages taking advantage of the change. In consequence, the typical line-up of sections is often altered to accommodate the most color-worthy photos and artwork.
[edit] Production Schedule
Production for each issue of The Spokesman lasts between one and two weeks. The paper has been known, however, to push back printing on occasion to maintain the quality of its product. The Spokesman does not subscribe to the Donald Rumsfeld doctrine of journalism, which asserts, "You go to [press] with the [paper] you have."
== History ==for
The Spokesman was founded in 1965 and has since gone to press uninterruptedly.
[edit] The Observer
In 1973, students reportedly seeking a paper independent of the administration launched The Observer, which unlike The Spokesman was not sponsored by the school. Relations between The Spokesman and The Observer quickly soured, and within a few years The Observer's status as Princeton Day School's second newspaper of record faded.
[edit] American Progressivism and The Spokesman
Spokesman editors have historically named the years that saw rises in the paper's quality after movements in American progressivism.
[edit] The Progressive Era
Throughout the early '90s, Spokesman editions were almost invariably four pages long. The end of 1994, however, brought what is commonly referred to as the newspaper's own Progressive Era. With a new Editorial Board came issues of 24, sometimes 28, pages. Quality of newsprint improved, too, as once flimsy, brown pages bulked up and bleached. Similarly, more diverse features were introduced to layout, which became manifestly more attractive.
What remained more or less the same, however, was The Spokesman's commitment to excellence in reporting, writing, and journalism at large.
[edit] The New Deal
The Spokesman's Progressive Era marked a then unprecedented change in the paper's very dynamics. Yet this Era of Good Feelings gave way to a sorry return to normalcy, and arguably a Great Depression of boringness, as the paper's previously engaging, provocative content took a turn for the mundane.
The 2007-2008 Editorial Board sought to reverse this trend, and in so doing launched what would become known as the New Deal of The Spokesman. This initiative produced, among much more, a story about the relationship between socioeconomics and the SATs, a series on the prevalence of religion at the school, and a piece about how the school is viewed by students elsewhere.
[edit] The Great Society
Yet the New Deal was by no means perfect, and perhaps its flaws revealed themselves most obviously in the Recession of 1937, when there was still much room for higher quality content and when typos grew all the more rampant. The current Editorial Board aims to add to the New Deal's accomplishments and aid its shortcomings in a War on Poverty. (See "Current Initiatives" below.)
[edit] Current Initiatives
The consensus among new Editorial Board members and The Spokesman's readership calls primarily for two changes.
[edit] Content
Many regard the monotony of the average The Spokesman story as the paper's most conspicuous flaw. (The emblem here is the Page One headline "Seniors Skip School for Traditional Cut Day.") The goal this volume, it follows, has been to avoid stories about how students attended an assembly two weeks ago and how they enjoyed said assembly very much and, in place, to run more highly angled features and provide the everyday with an interesting twist.
The Spokesman has by extension begun adding to the variety of content it publishes, looking to include personal and philosophical essays, the latter primarily in Opinions, as well as intrinsically editorializing advocacy and investigative pieces.
Additionally, a meeting with David E. Sanger, a New York Times Washington correspondent, produced a recommendation that The Spokesman expand its breadth of coverage to pertinent happenings in the area. To that end, the paper recently ran a Page One story on the all-volunteer Princeton Fire Department's response to two incidents at the school in April 2008, which administrators branded worrisome. Similarly, the Arts section now includes a monthly Cultural Calendar.
[edit] Murrow vs. Cronkite
How proper it is for a paper traditionally viewed as untaintedly objective to take on the "advocate" role has been the subject of much Editorial Board discussion. This has naturally been informed by the Murrow-Cronkite divide at CBS News in the '50s, in which the station's viewership witnessed prominent Cold War anchor Walter Cronkite depart considerably from famed World War II and early Cold War broadcaster Edward R. Murrow in his style of journalism. Murrow rested much faith in advocacy and frequently instilled opinion in his report, taking a highly active role in helping the audience interpret the facts. Cronkite conversely tended to report the facts without interpretation. Foregoing Murrow's habit of opining on them, he let his viewers make of said facts what they will.
This debate has came to life in Editorial Board consideration concerning the story on the Princeton Fire Department. (See "Content" above.)
[edit] Typographical Errors
The Spokesman firmly subscribes to the Bill Keller doctrine of typographical and other grammatical and syntactical errors, which asserts that no matter how good the content, a few words misspelled and commas misplaced are sure to kill any story. An emphasis on eradicating the typo and on carefully editing one's copy have appreciably reduced the frequency of such errors. Only one typo has been reported in all 12 pages of the new Editorial Board's first issue.
[edit] Syntactical Clarity
The paper's new editors have stressed the necessity for greater cleanliness in syntax.
[edit] Presence on the Web
From 2002 to 2007 The Spokesman featured a Web edition that was updated shortly after each issue's release. In early 2007, however, as the paper was in the process of updating this site, a foreseeable run-in with the law had the paper's Internet home pre-emptively shut down. The current Editorial Board plans to get the paper back onto the Web shortly and envisions a frequently updated site.
[edit] Font
The paper employs Garamond, a serif, as its typeface of choice. The current Editorial Board is, however, searching for a more progressive sans serif to replace Garamond. Currently leading on the shortlist is Gotham, by Tobias Frere-Jones (the font of Barack Obama's campaign for president). Price may be this canddate's greatest flaw, however. The Editorial Board is therefore looking at Helvetica as a less expensive option.
[edit] Style
The Spokesman aims to enhance its writing with highly progressive grammatical and syntactical standards in style, considered the most modern in the industry. To that end, the paper predominantly employs Associated Press style in its copy, save for in the following circumstances:
[edit] Courtesy Titles
The Spokesman prefaces the names of Princeton Day School community adults with "Mr.," "Ms.," or "Dr." Additionally, it applies the "Dr." title as preferred to any Ph.D.-holding individual.
[edit] Capitalization
The paper follows a considerably radical "down" style, with the following primary exceptions:
[edit] Position Names
The paper capitalizes the names of major positions at the school.
[edit] School Divisions
Divisions within a school, like "Middle School," are capitalized per Spokesman style.
[edit] Political Leanings
The paper is known for generally espousing liberal ideologies, apparent in its politically motivated editorials. In February 2008 it endorsed Barack Obama and John McCain for the Democratic and Republican nominations for president respectively, though it had decidedly more positive things to say of the former candidate.
The Spokesman has not received any complaints of bias on its newspages, however.
Most claim this skew to the left is a function of the school's particular location in New Jersey, which tends to vote heavily Democratic. This conclusion is similar to that of Daniel Okrent, the New York Times' first ombudsman, in the context of his own paper.
[edit] Pedagogical Philosophy
In its editorials The Spokesman has advocated for:
[edit] The Abolition of Advanced Placement Courses
The Editorial Board argued that AP courses so quash the freedom to digress that they ultimately detract from learning.
[edit] The Elimination of Trimester Grades
The Editorial Board argued that trimester (term) grades are not equitable, owing to teachers' differing styles of assigning them, and are heavily and oft-undetectably subject to bias. The conclusion, then, is that such grades are developmentally and educationally harmful, and ultimately demotivating.
[edit] Controversy
Like all members of the scholastic Fourth Estate, The Spokesman struggles with defining where the students' role ends and where the administration's role begins. This problem is only compounded by the fact that Princeton Day School is independent, and thus the First Amendment rights and Supreme Court precedent that typically establish these boundaries are null when it comes to The Spokesman.
The newspaper has engaged in dialogue with the administration regarding a number of articles, including a story about a break-in at the school and a series on sexuality, which never ran for quite different reasons.
Controversy has manifested itself most obviously, however, over how much the paper's two Faculty Advisors can ultimately steer the paper and whether or not they truly hold the final say.
In consequence, concern over The Spokesman's adherence to the Chinese wall property of journalism has been raised both within and outside the Editorial Board.
